


strangers on a plane

by dansunedisco



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Airplanes, Alternate Universe - Human, Businessman Derek, College Student Stiles, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3318329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/pseuds/dansunedisco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Two hours into the flight, Derek realized Middle Seat was close—too close for airplane etiquette, even in coach. He stopped typing, fingers poised over his keyboard.</i>
</p>
<p>Derek and Stiles sit next to each other on a flight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	strangers on a plane

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed notes re: panic attacks, drug use, and past Kate/Derek at the end.
> 
> For what it's worth, this fic is way more light-hearted than the warnings make it out to be, haha.

Derek hated flying, but it was a necessary evil. Every two weeks he was jet-setting across the globe to Hale assets in Europe, South America, and Asia to settle issues a teleconference could not.

He had a routine about it; work at the office until he had to leave for the airport, catch the redeye, work diligently through the flight, mainline a half-gallon of coffee at the executive club on the other side, and move along to do business at their foreign offices. Laura called him a workaholic (“type-A douchebag who’s gonna dig himself into an early grave” specifically), but he had been the one to personally secure half of their international partnerships. They were fragile relationships that required frequent and diligent tending, work he had a hard time leaving for anyone else to accomplish to his exacting standards.

He was going to Budapest this time, with a connecting flight through Frankfurt. Everything was going fine… until he checked in at the airport, only to have the desk attendant inform him, with practiced and overly saccharine sincerity, that his first class seat had been double-booked and _I’m sorry, Mr. Hale, the only seat left is a window seat in coach. Would you like to take that instead?_ Derek didn’t, but he had a certain side of the day he needed to arrive on, so he also didn’t have a choice. His sour mood followed him through security all the way to his seat, which had about half the legroom he was accustomed to. He grumbled, shoved his briefcase under the seat in front of him, and made a mental note to have Erica double- and triple-check his reservations in the future.

He held out hope that he might have the row to himself, but 24B and 24C arrived shortly after he sat. The two of them were clearly traveling together and, if Derek were pressed to guess, he would say they were father and son. There was a practiced way they moved around one another (the younger man shoved a suitcase into the overhead bin while the older man bobbed and weaved to avoid an elbow to the face), but there was also a tension between them which reminded Derek of the way he and his father would stew in their thoughts after a particularly nasty fight. 

Eventually, the younger man took the middle seat and buckled himself in with a deep frown. He drummed his fingers on his thigh, scowl deepening, and bent forward to reach into the backpack at his feet. He tugged out an outdated iPod and plugged his ear buds in, playing music loud enough that Derek could hear the tinny sounds over the air vents. The older man nodded his chin towards Derek, half-smiling, as if apologizing for Middle Seat’s behavior.

Derek grimaced back. He hoped neither of his seatmates’ wanted to unload whatever emotional baggage they had carried with them onto his trip. They had nine hours of travel time to get through and Derek knew from unwanted experience that that could mean _a lot_ of talking. Thankfully, neither of them looked like they wanted to do more than avoid each other and everyone else. That suited Derek just fine.

 

\--

 

Two hours into the flight, Derek realized Middle Seat was close—too close for airplane etiquette, even in coach. He stopped typing, fingers poised over his keyboard.

Middle Seat’s leg was plastered against Derek’s in a long line of unwelcome heat, his arm taking up the armrest. Derek shifted in his seat and cleared his throat, a pointed gesture that said _get the hell away from me,_ but Middle Seat didn’t budge. Derek side-eyed him, not wanting to engage verbally but wanting his space, and realized with some worry that Middle Seat was… not doing okay.

His eyes were wide and glassy, a faint sheen of sweat dotting his forehead even though the vents overhead were blowing full blast. His hands were gripping the armrests, knuckles straining white, and his breaths were coming out in short, tiny, little pants there were audible over the hum of the engines. A panic attack, Derek realized. He glanced over to Middle Seat’s traveling partner, but he was knocked out cold, a book spread open in his lap.

Soothing people was not Derek’s forte. He was better at intimidation, scowling his way through life and avoiding his feelings. But he had spent years after the fire unable to handle even a hint of smoke without having flashbacks to the choking, sweating, terrifying experience of the house fire that nearly killed him and his entire family. He couldn’t just let Middle Seat sit there… alone and scared and unwilling or unable to ask for help. Derek knew he should wake Aisle Seat up or signal for a flight attendant, but there was something about Middle Seat’s earlier behavior that made Derek think twice, made him think the spotlight would only make things worse.

Instead, he reached out slowly, deliberately, and placed his hand over Middle Seat’s and rubbed his thumb back and forth over Middle Seat’s pinky finger. Derek stared ahead, willing an aura of calmness to transfer by skin-to-skin contact while his own heart raced. 

It took a few minutes, but Middle Seat’s white-knuckled grip loosened and his breaths evened out and then deepened. He slumped in his seat and met Derek’s cautious gaze with a tired look of his own. “Thanks,” he whispered and pulled his hand out from under Derek’s with an embarrassed wince.

Derek knew he should go back to his work now that Middle Seat was fine. He had contracts he had to comb through before they landed, but—hell, he had already held the guy’s hand. “Does that happen a lot?”

Middle Seat shrugged one shoulder after a few seconds of bemused staring, as if he couldn’t believe the businessman next to him wanted to actually _know more_ about his panic attacks. “More when I’m stressed. It’s not a big deal.”

Derek’s therapist would disagree with him, but he nodded anyway. He understood the need to be _okay,_ even if you knew, deep down inside, that you were anything but. “I used to get them, too, when I was younger.”

“Really?”

“Mm. A bad fire. Couldn’t stand smoke for years,” he admitted, entirely unsure as to _why_ he was actually admitting anything in the first place. He cleared his throat. “I’m Derek, by the way.” 

“Stiles.”

Derek repeated the name, eyebrow curving up in disbelief. “Really?”

Middle Seat—Stiles, _really?_ —rolled his eyes in a way a person who received the same reaction from everyone he met could. “Trust me, it’s better off you don’t try to pronounce my real name.”

He smirked. “Can’t be that bad.” 

“You just want to be proved wrong, don’t you?” Stiles shoved his hand into his front seat pocket, rooted around between the magazines in the mesh pocket, and produced his boarding pass with a sweeping game show gesture. “Ta da. It’s literally a mishmash of consonants and accents.”

The name _was_ bad, by American standards, but ‘Stiles’ as a nickname wasn’t much better. “You couldn’t have come up with _Stan_?” Derek asked. “Stiles makes you sound like that One Direction kid.”

Stiles scoffed. “You’re pretty judgmental for knowing who they are.”

“I have a teenaged sister,” Derek said in way of defense, though Cora hadn’t been a teenager for while now and never would have listened to 1D, even if she had been in their target demographic. They were catchy, okay? He nodded towards Stiles’s iPod. “What are you listening to?” 

“Oh, _dude_.” Stiles handed him an ear bud. “Get ready for an experience.” 

After discovering “dub step” (which indeed was an _experience_ , though not in the sense in which Stiles was clearly hoping it to be), Derek had to return to work. It was painful this time around. His mind kept jumping away from the page, his body hyperaware of every single move Stiles made next to him. And Stiles seemed to be in constant motion, shifting, fidgeting, fingers tapping out a quick rhythm against his thigh. Derek snapped his laptop lid shut after thirty minutes of zero productivity and leaned back. 

Stiles shifted next to him. “You all done?”

Derek hummed. 

“So, business or pleasure?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Business, always.”

Stiles glanced down, squinted. “I’ll say. What’s up with the suits for traveling?” 

Derek shrugged. Uncle Peter had always argued that a well-tailored suit could be just as comfortable as loungewear, but Derek was more at home in jeans and a Henley than a three-piece. “You never know who you’ll to run into,” he said instead. “What’s your story? Business or pleasure?”

Stiles sighed and scratched the side of his face. “Neither. Going to Poland to, um, visit my grandma. Do the whole extended family tour, you know? They haven’t seen me since my m—since I was ten.” 

Derek had been forced to visit his cousins in Rhode Island every summer until he went to college, but he had a feeling that this type of forced family trip was different. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool,” said Stiles and motioned to Aisle Seat. “My dad bought the plane tickets as a grad present; thought it would be nice for me to reconnect with the old country.”

“Do you?” 

Stiles blinked. “What?”

“Think it’d be nice to reconnect.”

“Honestly? No.” Stiles swallowed, eyes flicking down to his knees. “I wish he would’ve saved the cash for something else. We got into a huge argument over it last week… and I kind of acted an ass before we drove out tonight, too.”

Derek looked over to Stiles’s father. He was still blissfully passed out. That, or doing a really good job of pretending he was. Derek didn’t take much stock in book cover impressions, but he had a feeling the older man only had (what he thought was) Stiles’s best interest at heart, like most parents did. “You still have—“ he checked his watch, “seven hours to fix it.”

Stiles snorted. “He hates flying and managed to wrangle a Valium ‘script last week. He popped one at the gate. I’ll be grateful if I don’t have to carry him off the plane when we land.”

“I’d help you,” Derek offered. When Stiles rolled his eyes, Derek realized with some trepidation that he would, in fact, help Stiles if he needed it; worse yet, he realized he was _flirting_ with the kid—and had been for a while now. Poorly, but it was there. _God_ , he thought, watching Stiles’s lips move. Stiles couldn’t have been older than twenty-three, a fair gap to Derek’s twenty-nine. Sure, he was attractive, but—yeah, no, what?

“I need to get up,” he blurted out, hardly waiting for Stiles to acknowledge his request and move before scrambling over Stiles and his father to escape. He walked the plane and shut himself in the rear bathroom, the furthest one from his seat, and glared his reflection into submission. Knowing his luck, the ticket Stiles’s father had bought was for Stiles’s _high school_ graduation, and now Derek was hitting on teenagers. The last relationship he had been in had almost cost him his life, so he felt like he was owed some leeway, but still. Bad, Derek, _bad_.

Eventually, a concerned flight attendant knocked on the door, and Derek slipped out with a sheepish nod. When he returned to his seat, Stiles popped up and joined him in the aisle, looking equal parts concerned and adorable.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You kinda ran away like—well, it’s none of my business, but you can totally confide in me. It’s a ‘strangers on a plane’ law.”

Derek’s stomach tightened up. There was nothing remotely romantic or sexy about being trapped on an airplane with hundreds of people, but Stiles talking at him in a hushed whisper in the glow of the reading light did something for him. He was officially going to hell. “It was nothing,” he said. “Leg cramps.”

Stiles pulled a face. “Leg cramps? Let’s pretend I believe you. Sit down and entertain me. Watching my old man drool isn’t as fun as I thought it’d be.” 

Derek sighed and shuffled back to the window seat, stomping down on his attraction like the well-adjusted adult he pretended to be. When Stiles sat next to him, he explained the ins and outs of corporate law, which Stiles pretended to be fascinated by, and Stiles fired back with a few stories of his friends and the shenanigans they had incited over the summer.

It was easy, talking to Stiles. He was sarcastic and a little rude, but smart as a whip and quick on his feet, picking up on Derek’s dry humor right away and giving back as good as he got. Before Derek knew it, the flight attendants were coming by with customs forms, Stiles was shaking his dad awake, and they were preparing to descend. It had been the quickest, most pleasant transatlantic flight Derek had ever taken. Not a wick of work was done, either, but Derek didn’t care.

“Thanks for—before,” Stiles said, when they were deplaning. “If you’re ever in Beacon Hills you should, um, hit me up. Here’s my number.” Stiles waved a napkin at Derek’s hand. “But don’t feel obligated or anything, I mean—“

“Stiles,” Derek interrupted, gently taking the napkin from Stiles’s hand. He smiled. If only Laura could see him now, he thought, making friends with complete strangers. “I’ll call you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles has a panic attack on the plane and Derek helps him through it. Derek's POV includes references to his own panic attacks. 
> 
> Kate Argent is not mentioned by name, but it's implied that that's the past relationship Derek's been in, so. Blanket warning on that.
> 
> There's also a mention of Sheriff Stilinski taking a Valium to make it through the flight.


End file.
